This award supports a Postdoctoral Fellow?Dr. Douglas Kowalewski?in developing a regional climate model for the McMurdo area of Antarctica. The project addresses one of the most interesting questions in Antarctic science: how stable is the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS)? The answer is critical to interpreting records of global climate change from marine sediment cores, as well as modeling sea level rise associated with global warming. Evidence from the McMurdo Dry Valleys has been interpreted to indicate that the EAIS has been stable for up to fourteen million years. However, the ANDRILL marine sediment cores collected just 100 km offshore support a much more dynamic ice sheet that includes complete loss of the Ross Ice Shelf, potentially requiring a dynamic EAIS. This apparent contradiction led to a new hypothesis: perhaps these records are not contradictory at all? Maybe climate varies dramatically across this region on scales of tens of kilometers? The hypotheses will be evaluated by a mesoscale climate model to characterize variations in regional climate. The work is being performed at the University of Massachusetts.
